In the field of presenting information, especially on small handheld apparatuses having small screens, the problem of viewing content on a screen that do not have room for all the content at once is usually solved by enabling scrolling of the content on the screen. However, this implies another problem: control of the scrolling. Different approaches have been provided to control scrolling. WO 03/058589 A2 discloses a user-interface application and a computing apparatus has the user-interface to assist the user in searching for information from a data array. In an example given, the data array is an ordered list of addresses. The user begins at a point on a list of addresses. After the user rotates a jog/shuttle knob, the list rolls down a low rate. As the user rotates the jog/shuttle knob further the scroll accelerates. After a predetermined time or number of items, a helper character is displayed. This character may represent a first letter of a name or a first digit of a telephone number. The UI displays the helper character to the user. The user continues to hold the position of the jog/shuttle knob until a help character, corresponding to his/her desired selection, appears. The user releases the jog/shuttle knob and may step through among a smaller group of data to locate the particular selection by incrementally rotating the knob from the neutral position. A problem with this is that it might be hard for the user to predict behaviour of the apparatus when scrolling. Another problem is that accuracy will be decreased as the apparatus speeds up scrolling at further actuation of the jog/shuttle knob.
Another approach is a “grab and move” tool where a marker is locked on a position on the content and then the content is moved with the marker. Accuracy is good with this approach, but scrolling through large size content with this approach puts demand on more efficient scrolling.
Prior approaches are either more technically oriented than user intuitive, or user intuitive, but not efficient when the total amount of content is much larger than the amount of content fitting into the screen. Therefore, there is a demand for an approach that combines efficiency and accuracy.